Screwpine/Pandan leaves

[Rhea_S]

Do any of you ever use screwpine leaves or extract? Please provide examples or recipes. I've only ever used the paste or extract for desserts.

For example, I made a pandan-flavoured sponge cake last weekend and I thought it was terrific. I decorated it with pandan buttercream icing and filled the cake with macapuno (some kind of mutant coconut) jelly. The flavours went well together although the cake and frosting were too St. Patrick's day. The pandan paste I used has an abundance of green food colouring.

[tissue]

I had a Malaysian dish of steamed fish in pandan leaf. It was very good.

[tonkichi]

we use the pandan leaves so much there is a pot of it on the balcony.

most commonly, we knot a few leaves of it and dump into the pot to impart fragrance to sweet soups (tong-sui) like black glutinous rice porrige (bubur hitam), green bean soup (tau suan) and a wheat like porridge ( bubur terigu). In other types of dessert like grass-jelly (chin chow) we throw the knotted leaves into the syrup that will sweeten the chin chow.

the juice is used as a natural colouring and is commonly found in egg custard (kaya) and pandan sponge cakes. There is also pandan kaya cake which is a combination of the cake and kaya.

a savoury use would be the pandan-wrapped chicken found in Thai restaurants, but I don't know how to cook this at home.

the pandan leaves also come in useful in a non-food sense. people leave it in the back of cars to repel flies, mosquitoes and other insects. Also results in the car smelling of tong-sui LOL.

[JustKay]

the pandan leaves also come in useful in a non-food sense. people leave it in the back of cars to repel flies, mosquitoes and other insects. Also results in the car smelling of tong-sui LOL.

There is also the inedible pandan variety (the leaves are rougher and a bit thorny and the smell is more 'perfume-y') - this is better used as you mentioned.

Here is a simple T&T Agar-agar Pandan recipe by Amy Beh (I think).

ingredients:

1 packet agar-agar (20-25gm) - not powdered agar-agar but the clear strips

5 1/4C water

1 1/4C sugar

6 fresh pandan leaves

1/4 t green color

1C thick coconut milk (fresh is better although Kara brand in quite good but never use the powdered santan=coconut milk) - add a dash of salt (when using santan always add a dash of salt to bring out more lemak/creamy flavor)

- cook agar-agar with water, sugar and pandan leaves until agar-agar is dissolved.

- strain

- pour out 3C into a bowl and add green color (the agar will have a nice pleasant pandan fragrance)

-pour this into a mould (I use 9X9 square cake pan - rinsed out first and leave it wet so the agar-agar won't stick to pan)

- boil the remaining agar-agar on medium heat until reduced to about 1C (this is important or the coconut layer won't set well). Add the 1C thick coconut milk. Bring to a boil and remove from heat.

- the green agar should be half-set by now

- pour out this coconut milk agar mixture on top of the half-set green agar

- set at room temperature and then refrigerate

- serve chilled

** note - if you let the green agar set before pouring the coconut agar, it will not bind together and the coconut layer will slip off when cut. On the other hand, if you add it to a still liquid green agar, the agars will mix. When done correctly, there will be two layers when cut.

You can add knotted pandan leaves to the rice you cook. And especially use it when cooking coconut milk rice (Nasi Lemak) or Nasi Minyak (rice cooked with Ghee). At the moment, no other non-dessert (Malay) dish comes to mind that uses pandan leaves.

In Malay weddings, pandan leaves are used as a base to make potpourri - it's not a Malay wedding unless you have this Bunga Rampai.

Edited May 18, 2004 by kew (log)

[Gul_Dekar]

My parents got me the "At Home with Amy Beh" cookbook and it has the recipe for pandan chicken as follows:

400g deboned chicken meat

large pandan leaves for wrapping

1/2 cup thick coconut milk

oil for deep frying

To Blend:

3 shallots

2cm young ginger

2 cloves garlic

1 stalk lemon grass

3 dried chilies, soaked

1 tsp chopped coriander root

Seasoning:

2 tsp light soy sauce

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp fish sauce (Nampla)

1/2 tsp ground turmeric

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp pepper

1 tbsp corn starch

Cut chicken into bite-size pieces. Combine ground ingredients with seasoning and marinate chicken pieces with it for 2-3 hours. Wrap 2 slices of chciken with a pandan leaf. Fold neatly into a triangular shape, tuck in the ends and secure with a toothpick. (the book has pictures of how to go about doing this... but unfortunately cant show it here)

Deep fry pandan-wrapped chicken in hot oil until pandan leaf is slightly burnt and chicken is cooked.

Pandan is also used a lot in many Malaysian desserts. A lot of times it's crushed to release the juices from the leaves (kinda like extract).

[JustKay]

Another good Malaysian recipe book is Taste of Malaysia (Rasa Malaysia) by Betty Yew. I bought this when I first got married and was just learning how to cook.

[trillium]

In addition to the other things mentioned, we always stick knotted pandan leaves in our rice for nasi lemak or hainanese chicken rice. In the US, I always buy the frozen ones from Thailand, I find they have more frangrance then the fresh ones from Hawaii, but it does make wrapping things hard!

regards,

trillium

[skunkbunny]

I have read Sri Lankan recipes with it used in rice and curry dishes but have never tried